1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a sheet conveying apparatus for conveying sheets, and an image forming apparatus such as a copier, a facsimile apparatus, a laser printer or a compound apparatus of these having the sheet conveying apparatus.
2. Related Background Art
A sheet conveying apparatus for conveying sheets has heretofore been provided, for example, in an image forming apparatus.
This sheet conveying apparatus is provided with a plurality of pairs of rollers, disposed along a sheet conveying path for guiding sheets, for conveying the sheets, and a plurality of drive motors for rotating the pairs of rollers and other rotary members, and is adapted to convey a sheet fed from a sheet cassette to image forming means for forming an image on one surface of the sheet, and thereafter discharge the sheet out of the main body of an image forming apparatus, or convey the sheet having an image formed on one surface thereof again to the image forming means to thereby form an image also on the other surface of the sheet, and thereafter discharge the sheet out of the main body of the image forming apparatus.
Now, the sheet conveying apparatus makes initial multiple rotations during the opening and closing of the front face opening and closing cover of the main body of the image forming apparatus. These multiple rotations are effected, supposing that after the clearance of jam, there is a sheet left in the image forming apparatus, to drive each pair of rollers for a predetermined time to thereby convey the sheet from a position at which it has not been detected by a sheet detecting sensor disposed in a sheet conveying path to an area in which the sheet detecting sensor can detect the sheet, and operate the sheet detecting sensor to inform a user.
These initial multiple rotations are generally effected to confirm the absence of remaining sheets in the image forming apparatus also when the power source switch of the image forming apparatus in its normal state is closed.
In the sheet conveying apparatus according to the conventional art, however, the conveying rollers have been started at a time during the initial multiple rotations and therefore, shock sounds and starting sounds during the meshing engagement between gears have been created at a time, and the starting sounds have become great and have given unpleasant feeling to the user. So, a countermeasure for the sounds has been taken by reinforcing the mounting portions for the drive motors or using a damping material and a soundproof material for each part of the image forming apparatus or the main body of the image forming apparatus and therefore, the size of the main body of the image forming apparatus has sometimes become large.